


Weightlessness

by Beleriandings



Series: In the midst of the innumerable stars [9]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, F/M, Grief, Space Gondolin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 20:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5679772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Turgon remembers that day when Elenwë taught him how to dance in zero gravity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weightlessness

“Elenwë, what are you doing?” asks Turgon, squinting at her hands on the corner control panel. They’ve been married nearly six months now, and if he’s learned anything it’s that Elenwë can still surprise him at every turn. “Wait, don’t press that, that’s the override for the - ”

“ _Artificial gravity field powering down_.”

Elenwë’s laughter ripples through the little control room - just big enough for the two of them - as Turgon feels his stomach lift, his body suddenly not anchored, his limbs loose and his traction on the floor diminishing. He grasps on to the emergency grip beside the door, in some trepidation.

“I’m sorry, I just felt so _heavy_ down there on Tirion…” he doesn’t know if she speaks of her pregnancy, the swollen ankles that she has been suffering with lately, or of the thick, stifling tension in the air in the court of Finwë, back down on his home planet. Perhaps it is both. “…but you should see your face!” Elenwë’s eyes widen suddenly. “Oh! Turno…. don’t tell me you never turned off the AG just for the fun of it? How did you even spend your adolescent years?”

“I spent them with Findekáno and the sons of Arafinwë, so of _course_ I’ve had the gravity turned off on me before” said Turgon, with a twist of a smile. “They all loved floating, inexplicably enough. Would take out Dad’s ship - or Finno’s or Ango’s when they got their own - and turn off the gravity as soon as we got off-planet. They’d all challenge each other to do rolls and flips, that sort of thing. I never quite saw the appeal, myself… it made me feel a little spacesick just to look at them.” He smiles a bit fondly at the memory, despite himself. Finrod hadn’t cared much for his brothers’ and cousin’s antics much either; he had preferred to travel the inner system, so together he and Turgon had often made the journey to Valmar or Taniquetil in their close, regular orbits, or the small waterworld of Alqualondë, blue and sparkling in the mingled light of the binary stars.

Elenwë’s voice breaks into Turgon’s reminiscence. “Well, don’t worry. I shan’t force you to do any flips, not if you don’t want to…” She pushes delicately off the opposite wall, floating neatly across the space between until she is beside him, grasping a handful of his sleeve to keep herself there. After a moment, she takes his free hand instead, and Turgon can feel his initial surprised nervousness at the loss of gravity disappearing already.

Her smile is infectious. “And since rolls are out of the question I’m afraid…” she lays a hand on the swell of her stomach, their growing child which she carries within her “…then how about this. How about I teach you how to dance in zero gravity?”

“Dance?” They float, their hair loose around their heads in great swaying, rippling haloes, golden and dark, which shift languidly in the recirculated air within the ship as they drift.

“Yes. It’s much more fun than dancing at all those dreary balls on Taniquetil and Tirion, you know.”

He feels his own mouth curving into a smile. “Well, then maybe I have been missing out.”

“You have.” Her eyes flick to his hand on the emergency grip. “You know, you have to let go, Turno.” He hesitates for a moment longer, and she puts both of her hands on his. “I’ve got you, don’t worry.”

He lets go.

She pushes them off the wall, very gently, and they drift into the centre of the control room. He can see the floor, but it doesn’t feel like down, not anymore. That feeling has always made him nervous in the past, but to his surprise it doesn’t so much now. Elenwë holds his hands and a bright bubble of joy in this swells within him, his heart lifting into his throat; that much at least, he thinks, has little to do with weightlessness and everything to do with being momentarily free from care and responsibility, from being with the woman he loves in their own little ship - a wedding present from his grandfather - with the stars and the bright arc of Tirion’s horizon rising into their field of view. It was waiting for their baby, and as Elenwë slips an arm about him and pulls him close, he can feel the swell of her pregnancy, the warmth of her body supporting their precious child. She places her fingers against the wall and gives them another little push, a spin this time, precise and well-directed. That’s all it takes, and they turn together, as though they really are dancing at a ball in Tirion, only now their feet do not touch the painted grille of the control room’s floor.

They are still vertical - not that that means much at all right now - by Elenwë’s design. They could have rolled over now, sent themselves tumbling over and over in a tangle of long hair and joy and breathless laughter, and perhaps he may even have done so, emboldened by Elenwë’s presence. He had never cared much about such larks when it had been his brothers and cousins, but with Elenwë, everything is different, brighter somehow. But he gets the feeling that there would be no art to that; the skill of this comes in staying upright, of spinning in a precise circle, of separating and coming back together in perfect time.

“Good!” laughs Elenwë, letting go of one of him with one hand and spinning him with the other, as in the popular dances of the Vanyar. “See, you’re picking it up very quickly.”

He grins. “I have to admit, this is fun. I may entirely give up dancing _with_ gravity.”

Elenwë’s laughter rings in the small space as she lets go of his hands, tugging herself back to the control panel for a moment more. “Well, there’s something I never expected from you. You still surprise me every day.”

“You’re one to talk!” He gazes out at the planet outside the wide window for a moment, before glancing back to Elenwë. He frowns. “What are you doing?”

She doesn’t answer. She only smiles enigmatically, clicking a button that causes a tiny green light to come on, before pushing herself off the wall once more, coming back to join their hands again. He frowns. “What are you doing?”

“I thought this needed to be recorded for posterity.”

“What do you…” the light blinks and finally he recognises it, even as she begins to spin him again. “Elenwë! Are you holochipping this?”

She laughs once more. “Well, yes. Just go with it, Turno. You’re a wonderful dancer, you know.” His hand is on the small of her back, and hers around his shoulders, and they are barely spinning now, merely swaying their bodies from side to side as their hair and clothes float about them. She leans close, murmuring in his ear, almost too low for him to catch her words. “We need to record these moments. One day, we’ll show them to our child.”

Turgon thinks his heart about to burst with love. “Can we not teach him or her ourselves?”

He feels her smile, her cheek against his. “Of course, we shall do that too.”

The recording carries on, the blue sweep of the holorecorder’s beam passing over them every so often as they dance, the quiet whirring and clicking of the console and the screens the only music they need.

* * *

He does not take much in the way of personal items as they leave Tirion; only his rings, some of Idril’s toys she has left behind that she might want, a picture of his mother. His and Elenwë’s clothes and flight gear that they are taking are all packed away for the journey, their fine court clothes largely left behind. He takes one last look around their room before he turns away to go and rejoin his wife and daughter, who are waiting in the square with the rest of the host of Fingolfin.

But just as he turns to leave, something catches his eye. A glimmer on the table; a handful of tiny silver disks, each no bigger than a coin, each with a hole through its centre. Recordable holochips; each one bearing one of Elenwë’s recordings in loving three-dimensional detail. Turgon frowns. They are not taking any sort of projection system with them, for the drain on their ships’ power is too much to justify, and only necessities are to be carried, by decree of Fingolfin himself. Turgon can see why the holochips were left behind, for without a player they may as well be pieces of metal, the recording locked away in the chip within.

Yet still, it feels wrong to leave them behind. He makes his way over to the table, his hand hovering above the little pile of silver-bright disks. Surely, once they had made crossing to the far off Endorë system, they could built new holoplayers? They would build all sorts of things, all the tech that they had had to leave behind in the darkened Valinor system would be replaced, improved even.

His hand closes on the metal disks, and he holds them in his palm, peering at the tiny stamped labels on the metal casing. _Itarillë’s eighth begetting day. Findekáno playing the galactic reels on the electropipes. Irissë’s impression of Fëanáro. Ñolofinwë’s speech in King’s Square_. All catch his eye, memories flooding back, a jumble of happiness and laughter with his family, undercut with the unrest upon Tirion that has grown in these last years. He does not even need to play them; simple recollection is enough. _Ñolofinwë’s regency coronation. Anairë teaching Arakáno to braid his hair. Turukáno and Findaráto playing moonstones + Turno losing_. He can practically see Elenwë with her recorder. He frowns. There are no recordings of Elenwë herself, for she was always the one recording, the one behind the holocam, directing where the sweep of the recorder beam goes.

Or perhaps not quite always.

His hand comes to a halt in sorting through them as another label catches his eye.

 _Zero-gravity dancing + Me and Turno and Itarillë_.

His face breaks into a smile at that. Itarillë had not even been born then, Elenwë had been pregnant with her, but it is so very _like_ Elenwë to phrase it like that. And that day, that memory, had been one of such peace and comfort that he can barely believe, now, that it had really happened.

The sound of an engine’s roar outside breaks into his reminiscence, and he starts; they must be leaving soon, he knows. Quickly he makes his decision. He scoops the little pile of holochips into his hand, then pulls out the loose cord of his flight suit’s collar. He strings the tiny disks one by one through the holes in their centres on the cord, and ties it around his neck. Then, with one last look around the room, he turns to leave.

* * *

Gondolin is burning, the once-carefully-controlled mixture of gases that make up its atmosphere gushing out of the great flaming rents in the atmospheric membrane, the planet’s oxygen supply like fuel to a wick. Driving the flames that would soon scourge the surface of the little greenworld to black ash, drifting slowly off into space. Turgon knows this; he knows, too, that Idril has gotten away, the fleet she has prepared lifting off with barely moments to spare before the launch platform collapses.

He stays behind; there is nothing for him off world. He will die with his beloved planet. It is just a matter of waiting now. Perhaps he has been waiting for this all his life. Perhaps he has never stopped waiting.

He stands in the state room in his tower, the alarms from the burning city surprisingly distant and faint here. He reaches up to his throat and touches a cord that he always wears as a necklace, a little row of tiny steel disks strung like beads through the holes in their centres. It is a comfort to him, and even though the technology is antiquated - much more sophisticated holographic projection technology has been developed since then - he always wears them still. To reduce wear on the disks themselves, he has hardly ever played them, though he does own a reconstructed Tirion-era holoprojector. A sentimentality project, as he has always thought of it, but one that he has never regretted. He looks over at it in the corner of the room, mildly surprised to see that the device is still working, its green light still flashing in readiness.

An idea comes to him then, bitter laughter bubbling at his lips even as he clutches the bunch of tiny disks harder, metal biting into the palm of his hand.

 _Well, what’s the point in not playing them now? There’s nothing to save them for, no more of my life left to live through_.

He knows exactly which recording he wants to see, too.

“Elenwë” he whispers, as he chooses a holochip from amongst the others, clicking it carefully into place in the projector “I was never much good at letting my feet leave the ground. Please can you show me how, one last time?”

There is a click, and the projector whirrs into life. Immediately, in the space in the centre of the room, two shining, blueish figures appear, just a little smaller than life size. They are made of light, but they appear three-dimensional, spinning through the still air of the room while outside the world burns. An illusion, but then that is exactly what Turgon craves right now. He stands in the centre of the room and around him the two figures are floating, their hair lifted about them. They spin in circles, laughing and talking in voices made grainy by age of the recording, but it doesn’t matter because he remembers well enough what he said that day, and what Elenwë replied.

 _Wait only a little longer, my love_ , he thinks as he watches, _and I will see you again_. _I am not brave, Elenwë. Be there for me at the end, please, my love? Lift me off my feet, make me weightless, for I cannot bear to fall._

For a second, the pale blue holographic shade of his wife looks briefly into the camera, at him, the real Turgon instead of the long-lost ghost in the recording. ( _How long had it been since he had lost that version of himself?_ he wonders _._ )

And, for just a moment, it seems to him that she smiles.


End file.
